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What If Mental Illness *Isn't* Like Physical Illness?

Physical illnesses differ. And mental illnesses differ.

I think it's impossible to generalize.

I also need to do more research on this topic.

It's also late and I probably should not blunder into this topic.

And I know I have blown it a bit out of proportion. But I remember a very prominent blogger once wrote a rant against some friend or relative she had who was depressed or had some type of mood disorder and refused to take medication.

Why the nerve!

I wish I had some colorful story to tell but the fact is that no one should ever have to take medication. No one. Particularly not for mental illness.

The sad truth is that there is a distinct possiblity, one being debated in various corners, that anti-depressants barely work. Anti-psychotics may work better for some people. But they also cripple some people.

Everyone should absolutely be offered the best medical treatment for any illness they have, mental or physical. And this includes medication. I simply don't believe that people should have to take medication that could be mood or personality altering. I think our humanness, our highest freedom, is to decide to the best of our capacities whom we shall be. And when it comes to 'mental health,' a person who is is burdened with some condition is given a less wide set of options than other people. But those are their options. And if they believe that a medication is deadening or they dislike it, then I think even psychotics should be allowed to refuse if--like 95% of psychotics--they pose no special threat to other people.

This is especially true for the anxious, the depressed and other mood-disordered or personality-disordered sufferers.

I admit to being suspicious of medication for mood disorders, in terms of their effectiveness vs. the ubiquity of their use.

They are taken because having a mood disorder can be a terrifying thing.

And yes, I've certainly stood in front of a live source of electricty with a water bottle in my hand and done various other life-threatening things. Anyone who reads this blog--well, it's fucking obvious I am not an entirely sane individual, whatever the fuck that is.

But at the same time, I really have gotten down into the dirt and dug. I am someone who is classic in every way. Classically compulsive, mood-disordered mentally ill. And I've discovered some very real things about how profoundly the life one lives can contribute to this illness. Now getting past that with the illness--there is the terrible challenge. How do you survive that. For example, now. How do I survive now?

I am lucky; I think I can do it. I've acquired the knack. I've spent most of my life wishing I were dead. It's such a shame but medication never made it much different. It would work for a bit and then have some horrible side effect and then stop working but I'd be stuck with the lingering health problems caused by it.

I learned that I have to continually dig myself out. I like what people say about drugs, for them. I am glad for them. But I want someone to say something different because I am sure there are people like me.

If the medication is not working so well or if you've taken everything or if you don't want to do it, you will be afraid because you won't know whether you can survive.  But get off them and watch--watch. Becuase you may find it is not very different than it was before.

You'll have to find other solutions. I think for some people medication can also be dangerous because when it stops working people don't thik there are other things they can do. Medication is far from the best way to deal with mood disorders. It's just the cheapest way, it works for some people, it makes other people money, it makes everyone think you'll stop being a pain in their ass, it makes people feel safe--it makes you feel safer.

It's hope in a bottle, it really is.

I remember the day I stepped back after my body was so screwed up and my brain was so screwed up by paxil--I remember finding dozens and dozens of web postings about this horrible drug. And youtube videos of people discussing the awful side effects. Then finding people had actually died on another drug I'd taken. One that used to make me sick and I didn't know why but it was also the only one that didn't cause severe weight gain. Now I have liver issues that may be tracable to that medicine.

I only needed this medicine because I hadn't learned about other mind-body solutions--I was too afraid to wing it. Of course, one reason is that people won't like you if you are suffering mentally, you won't be as successful in life.  There were things I wanted that I felt I could get more easily if I could mask the symptoms. But I also didn't want the terrible distress I felt. I was afraid of how overwhelmed I would be.

I think my first freedom happened because I was too afraid to take any medicine when I was pregnant so I got off it before getting pregnant. I was insane my whole pregnancy but not a danger to myself--another life was at stake. In some ways, even when I had this very bad PPD, I started to become truly sane then. I can't explain it. Sanity...I sought some other kind of sanity.  A more real sanity.

I still seek this. It is an authenticity, a groundedness. I am so far from having it but I get glimpses now and again.

I had to really go through a lot of garbage to reach this point though. I had to really face what utter shit I'd been through growing up. When I took medicine I didn't have to do that. It seems never ending, the memories, sorting through all that trash.

And feelings, horrible feelings. I had to feel them. All the time.

This isn't a story of me coming out through the other side. And sometimes I'm simply going to have to perform and I don't know if I can do that without taking a single anti-anxiety pill ever as long as I live. I will fuck things up too much probably.

It's not a success story, or some how-to. I only say it because it seems like there isn't an alternative narrative to the psychopharm narrative.

I'm going through a terrible time right now because I am on fertility medications that cause severe depression and it's winter and I have SAD and there is probably no way any of this nightmare infertility experience is going to be resolved in my favor. It is unpleasant to say the least (only people who've been through this really get it--you honestly have to be there).

And people will be so angry if I say I just decided this won't kill me this time or ever.  True, you can't decide not to be depressed and you certainly can't decide how bad to get. Sure, I want to drive my Toyota off the bridge today into the frozen river--I thought about this tonight. But I won't do it. So I'll just put up with this shit 'til whenever.

That's my motto for 2011: I'll just put up with this shit 'til whenever. Because this shit's not going away.

Those are my words to live by. For now anyway.

Gratitude & Optimism

I posted on twitter something like "What does it say about me that I feel compelled to oppose the purveyors of all feel-good self-helpy advice?"

I seem to have some decent reasons for this. One thing I don't like about the dissemination of self-helpy advice is that they take experiences, attitudes of great beauty and worth and weave them into platitudes and then make money in some way.

Love, courage, beauty, truth. Eat, pray, love.

They write a book, have a show, make a website.They franchise the eternal goods, if there are any.

That is, they market what there is to value in the human experience into some cheap gimcrack.

All that is universal and true and belongs to us so should never be sold.

It's very American though. America is chock full of such cheapenings. If there is a community, a caring community (Main Street USA!) then why not make a false facsimile of such a community where everyone who walks through is an utter stranger to everyone else? What we have instead of experience is the experience of watching someone else perform experience. 

The difficulty of what is peddled is wrung out from the feel-good. Thus, it puzzles me why the same people who are drawn to easy self-helpy solutions to the human condition like Buddhism and see it as something upbeat, positive, a slogan like 'Hang in There Baby, Friday's Coming.'

Buddhism is, at least as far as i can tell: You don't have a self. The reality you care about is riven through with illusion. Don't forget you will die. Existence is suffering. The only way to free yourself from suffering is non-existence.

One training for Buddhist monks (I read in a self-helpy book so I could be wrong!) is to meditate on the thought of oneself as a dead body. In order to realize the utter foamy ephemera that makes up who one is. There's no meaning, there's no substance, there's actually no point to anything. I find this idea very liberating but I don't think it is what people hear. They seek this peace but I find it hard to believe that Californians in the Lexuses listening to Buddhist books on tape are actually seeking their own non-existence. Maybe I underestimate them.

There's also compassion, incredible compassion to sweeten the ashes. Compassion for all that lives. But I'm not sure the self-helpy world sees the ashes.

These reasons for rejecting positivity are too abstract to be my real reasons. I don't think this is the reason I am opposed to platitudes and feel-good messages.

I think the reason I am opposed to platitudes and feel good messages is a bit less flattering to me: They scare me. I can intellectualize it. I am so very good at that. Also, they are utter bullshit so it is easy.

But why does it bother me? Because they are saying 'everything will be OK' 

It's true it's also a lie that everything is OK or will be OK. 

But I don't want to let my guard down. 

Some of the people in my family live in a culture of pessimism and I know where that comes from. It comes from having very bad things happen to you and the people you love. How do you protect yourself? How do you keep yourself from shattering?

If only you could not love, could not feel. If only you had no hope.

I learned this.

I was thinking if I could ever have a New Year's Resolution it would to not live this way anymore--to not live expecting disaster at every turn. To hope.

But it would be wrong to think that because I am so in the grip of a certain kind of negativity, this would not be fair.

I really liked Schmutzie's gratitude thing (which is not self-helpy in the way I mean, but communal & eschewing platitudes) but I could not do the gratitude thing. 

I want to change, ergo I would probably be attracted to some self help. So who am I to say what people should provide or seek?

Even so, my negative way of thinking about things has a kind of built in gratitude. I take almost nothing for granted. 

Every day my child is a never ending delight to me. Yes, I worry about her incessantly. But I'm beside myself when I see her. If it were August in Manhattan and you'd walked for hours and finally got to a cool shower and a glass of lemonade, my kid is that shower and that lemonade for me every single day.

I used to wake up in my room in a flat I shared and be so happy for the tree outside my window. 

I am always so amazed that I am married and happy.  I feel intense gratitude. Of course, my gratitude involves hugging my husband tight each day and saying "But I love you so much. I LOVE YOU. Don't die! Please don't ever die!' 

This amuses my husband. I'm sure you can guess that I wouldn't be married to someone who wanted an especially normal wife.

I do rather difficult things. I do things that are future directed. I get a PhD, for example. That was a terrible mistake in a way but it required a certain kind of faith in the future. 

I'm not ungrateful, I'm not only pessimistic. I simply have a painful awareness that some things are very wrong and it seems to follow me everywhere I go.

Foamy

You'd never think you'd hear me say it but there are things on this earth that are indescribably beautiful, there are acts of pure goodness, love redeems us.

All so fleeting. It'll be like we were never here. Almost. In that almost, is everything.

Always, I was seeking more, there was always something I was after. Sometimes it made a lot of sense. When it was love, it sometimes made a lot of sense. When I thought it was love, it was sometimes madness. When it was work, sometimes it wasn't a terrible idea.

Most of the time it wasn't worth the effort, all the things I sought, or worried about or acquired. Only a tiny fraction mattered for themselves, the rest was killing time.

I was waiting to be kinder, better. I thought I'd become kinder and better. I am wounded and do the wrong thing. But I do know how to love, even if my love for some has been imperfect.

There had better be a God to clear this whole thing up, that's all I'm gonna say.

It's OK if it is all foam, a dirtclod in the rain. But beautiful you, how can you pass away? Why wouldn't we be together forever when I love you so?

To describe the circumstances of my birth, the origins of my life such as it is: An empty lot. A smoldering tire.

A pile of waste so teeming with mutant vermin the ethics of departing explorers require them to nuke it from orbit.

A planet that should never have been born, an absolute mistake. If there were a whit of cosmic mercy, the laws of physics would have changed at the moment of creation to permit the abomination to fall into the sun.

I am Caliban. For real, y'all.

Ending up as dust doesn't feel like enough. Only the annihilation of matter will do, a reversal of time, full-blown non-existence.

I hate Christmas.

30 Non Consecutive Days of Truth: Redemption? Edition

So now I can possibly redeem myself by talking about something less horrible, which is

Day 05 → Something you hope to do in your life.

The Whole List of Truth Spilling You Would Do If You Wanted To Do 30 Days of Truth

This is a hard one. Should I be realistic or should I discuss something I hope to do in my life that I could very well not get around to doing?

This one gives me a chance to be positive. But can I do that? NO! Because I have to mention that I think life lists are often temptations to dreams of experiential consumptive excess. 

My own view is that the crucial pursuit in life is not subjective experience but what you accomplish. And the crucial things to accomplish are goals benefiting others, acts of love and such.  But Mastercard commercials have created an American populace whose life lists are merely about things they can do that they could charge to credit cards.

Of course I want to go to India. But that's not the point. 

The sad truth is that it dawned on me far too late that being successful and rich actually has many benefits and includes many things that I would like, like travel to exotic places.

But when I think of something I hope to do and I think of what is worth doing, I think accomplish something. 

And then I think about all the things I want to accomplish and doubt that I can do them.

One thing I don't doubt much is I can write a book in my field and get it published. It's just going to be REALLY freaking hard. The reason I don't doubt it much is that if I don't do this, my life will suck. Writing books on a somewhat regular basis when you are a college professor means not being a total, complete and utter failure. I'll probably waste a bunch of time and then start to see pathetic failure looming on the horizon and then write the book punctuated with much psychotic effort and desire to jump off a bridge.

I do hope to do this. I hope it won't involve a desire to jump off a bridge but I know myself too well for that.

However, this is a petty professional goal. What would I really like to do in my life?  I would like to do something unselfish and good and kind that made some kind of difference in other people's life. And it interests me how difficult this is and also how bad I am at it. 

Basically, for everything I want to do I seem to need terror to whip me into shape.

I'd also like to write children's books.

This wasn't positive.Sorry.

I have yet to redeem myself with positivity on the 30 days of truth.

 

30 Non Consecutive Days of Truth: Heavy Edition

So, basically so HEAVY man.

Something you have to forgive someone for? Hello, holy shit do I now have to talk about every bad thing bad people have done to me?

I'll tell you what popped up in my head recently when I read this: I remember the relative who coerced money from my most beloved relation in the world, his father, an old man. Money, every single day to finance his drug habit.

Every day this sweet man would write down his ledger the 'loan' that he had given--a $100 here, a $100 there. Sometimes three times a day. A few hours would go by. Another 'loan,' dutifully recorded.

And then he had no money to see his sister when she died. He had no money for his care when he was falling down. He had no money for his burial. 

The relative--someone pretty closely genetically related to me--was also a gambling addict. So I don't know if he was getting money for drugs or gambling.

He became a loathsome being but if there is one thing I tend to notice is that no one is perfectly irredeemable in every way. Virtually every bastard in this world has some little pocket of humanity, hidden deep within the fetid swamp that is their soul. It often isn't much but I cannot utterly turn from any human being, I cannot purely hate or despise. 

So to continue with the heaviness, the drug addict just died last week. Sort of end of an era of a sort.  And I found myself in great turmoil, crying.

But I could not be mourning him. I don't think it is possible for me to mourn him even if he gave me some stuffed animals as a child or a graduation present. I must be mourning my darling sweet but maybe imperfect and weak person, his father--His father whom he at first made proud and then would have shattered with disappointment if the denial hadn't run so deep.

He knew what a monster his son had become, I think. There was a twinge of bitterness in him that had no other explanation. He had two children and they were as close to worthless as people can be. I can't imagine what that would be like.

The oddest thing is that this man, the father of these contemptible sons, was capable of loving, was loyal to his bones, would have died for his kids, loved them to the end, left them every penny. So how to explain it? He would reminisce about their childhood daily. He changed their diapers. They were his life.

It is the kind of thing that happens in my family.  It gives Eugene O'Neill a run for his money. 

So, forgiveness. I forgive the beautiful loving man who is now gone for...I don't know what, but something. And somehow maybe I'll forgive his miserable, worthless child for being unfailingly selfish and callous and deluded almost every day of his life and for hurting everyone around him again and again.

Or maybe I'll just let go, love eternal for the father, no forgiveness for the addict son. It's all over, except the echo in me that is sure every good and beautiful thing, every love and joy is destined to rot and turn foul and that my own choices will doubtless be implicated.

No Really, I Am

I'm coming back here and I'm going to write and write.

But I've been in a bit of my own private struggle with my attempts to have another child.

It's something I think I must do but it's also something that seems to cause me nothing but heartache.

It's so salient it is hard to write about anything else.

I know whole blogs have been devoted to this topic. But I can't bring myself to talk about it in detail yet. Also, it's kind of boring. 

Please keep your fingers crossed for me or whatever kind of juju/divine intervention you want to mentally invoke for me. 

30 NON CONSECUTIVE Days of Truth: Evasion Edition

OK, so something I have to forgive myself for.

OH MY GOD EVERYTHING.

People died. I wasn't there. I was there but not enough. I did not raise them from the dead.

You name something bad, I blame myself for it.

But for sure, the most horrible thing always involves my daughter. Every time I yelled at her in anger (not THAT many times). Any time I was not a complete adult in her presence. 

Half the time I don't know what to do. There's a lot of psychological brilliance required to raise one's kid well and my kid is especially challenging in this vein.

But just to cover all my bases, I have to forgive myself for being imperfect, petty, judgmental, lazy, unkind, selfish. I can be all these things.

Imperfect. What does one do? Such imperfection I embody in every way!

I'd rather not get into details.

Love Is

I'm doing Palinode's 30 Days of Truth

I'm supposed to write about something I love about myself. Here's a picture:

 Now this reminds me of my aunt. She had these 'Love is...' books. I read them voraciously. Like all books I read at the time, I thought they must have secret messages about how the world worked that I would decode slowly, as I became an adult. 

If I were a better writer, I could explain this. The 70s, I a rather neglected child with a teenage aunt. Someone that paid attention to me, at last. I remember losing my toy and being distressed and having her help me find it. Somehow this amazed me--her calm, her concern, her willingness to stop and search.

Everything about her fascinated me. From the mentholated isopropyl alcohol she put on her pimples to the yellow plastic round AM radio she carried around with her. She listened to AM radio--things like Seals 'n Crofts 'Summer Breeze' to Steve Miller Band. 

I secretly love Steve Miller Band to this day.

Since it was my family there were crises. The time she ran away with her crazy boyfriend and my family was afraid they were going to commit double suicide. Things are so murky when you are a kid. You overhear things and don't quite know what's going on.

I almost never see her now.

My grandmother lived in the country. The house she and my aunt lived in was about as chaotic and messy as my house. I must have gotten that from her. She had one of those old green wine jugs in the fridge for water. I think if I ever drank that well water from that jug I'd be transported in time just like Proust was by the madeline. But the jug is long gone, it's all long gone.

Maybe that is what I love about myself--my memories. Do I have a quality about myself I love? Probably not. But I cherish my past sometimes, at least bits of it. It's so full of sorrow. Every bit of it is interwoven with some sadness, some lack, some loss, some betrayal and absence. I love it like you love an ugly dog. I had two of these. Small ugly strays, never housebroken.

I love memories like sad weary little 7 year old me, trudging home from school alone, locked out of the house for some reason, sitting in the carport and finding these tiny spider webs in between the bricks of the house. When you pushed on them, a little spider would run out. In the miniscule cracks of everything lies a world we can't see. 

So maybe that's something I can love about myself: I'm always looking for that world, that secret, hidden world, that one elusive truth. Waiting for some sense to be made out of everything.